Comments, observations and thoughts from two left coast bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is a new assistant professor. Mark is a marketing statistician and former math teacher.

Monday, February 14, 2011

As a footnote to this post, I once spent an entire meeting (at a corporation that shall remain nameless) writing a team mission statement based on the intro to Star Trek. It consisted of lines like this:

"To seek out new data and new analytic techniques."

The attendees were all experienced modellers and data miners, some fairly high ranking with commensurate salaries. Everyone in that room had something else they needed to be doing and, except for the senior manager present, I doubt that anyone present saw any real value in the exercise. Still, word had come down from the top that every distinct subgroup in the company needed its own mission statement so there we were, boldly splitting that famous infinitive one more time.

On the bright side, at least this was one time we didn't have to have a pre-meeting.